IPCC, Oceans and a 2°C warming target

Posted on June 11, 2015 by snarayan

Next month, the global science community will come together ahead of the COP21 of the UNFCCC in December to discuss the key issues concerning climate change. Discussion will include a focus on the ocean. The ocean is critical to life on Earth through its regulation of atmospheric gases, stabilisation of planetary heat, and provision of food and resources to well over 4 billion people worldwide. I will start with a peek at the processes for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC, including the roles of the authors, editors and expert reviewers, coordination across chapters and working groups and assessment of the literature. AR5 included a number of oceans chapters for the first time, which identified serious risks to marine ecosystems, fisheries, and coastal livelihoods. Focusing on these, I’ll discuss the key findings, updating with recent knowledge, with particular reference to the 2°C global warming target.

Elvira Poloczanska
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, Brisbane, Australia
Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

CSIRO Hobart – – photo by Bruce Miller 4/2008

KNB data search tool demonstration

Posted on May 21, 2015 by Yiwei Wang

UPDATE: Here are the links Lauren mentioned in her talk.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/a/nceas.ucsb.edu/presentation/d/1zdZLh3YRIXWsxXFNuo1c6N7hqgbn_KFzL9_ztPm1HC4/edit?usp=sharing
Provenance/Workflow dataset: http://search.test.dataone.org/#view/urn:uuid:bf71c38b-22b2-469e-8983-734ec0ab19cb
KNB: https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/#data/page/0
Download Morpho: https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/#tools/morpho
R DataONE library: https://releases.dataone.org/online/dataone_r/

We have a great tech roundtable on May 27!

Lauren Walker, a programmer based at NCEAS, will be leading an informal demonstration of the KNB: Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, an international data repository and DataONE member node. She will demonstrate how to submit a dataset to the KNB via an online tool and through the DataONE R client.

She will also give a demonstration of the DataONE online search interface, which queries all 24 DataONE member nodes, using the same web software as KNB. This will include a preview of the upcoming scientific data provenance features in DataONE.

Lauren will open the roundtable up for feedback, suggestions, and to hear what you would find most useful with these kinds of tools.

Catalysing transdisciplinary synthesis in ecosystem science and management

Posted on May 5, 2015 by snarayan

On Friday May 15, 2015, we have a special roundtable session with Alison Specht at ACEAS, who will be visiting NCEAS. Alison will give us an overview of NCEAS’ cousin across the Pacific, talk about an upcoming paper on synthesis in ecosystem science and management and will also discuss her perspectives on ACEAS and other synthesis centres. Do join us for what should be a very interesting discussion!

Alison Specht
Associate Professor Alison Specht is an environmental scientist with broad expertise in research, teaching, and community engagement. She gained her qualifications and taught at the University of Queensland, and for many years was a research and teaching academic at Southern Cross University in northern New South Wales, Australia. She has written scientific papers and book chapters, and is the co-author of two major books on the nature and assessment of Australian vegetation.

Between 2009 and 2014 she was director of the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis <www.aceas.org.au>, a facility of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network <www.tern.org.au>, an Australian-government funded datanet. She has been a member of the DataONE Usability and Assessment Working Group since its inception, and has great interest and expertise in data management and the preservation of archival data. She is about to take up a position as Directrice of the CEntre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity in France <http://cesab.org/index.php?lang=en>. She initiated the formation of the International Synthesis Consortium <www.synthesis-consortium.org> which has recently had its second meeting, whose mission is to increase the effectiveness and recognition of the value of synthesis centres.

Here are links to two papers that Alison will be touching upon in her discussion:

Transdisciplinary synthesis for ecosystem science, policy and management: the Australian experience.

Perceived discontinuities and constructed continuities in virtual work

A Framework to Improve Data Attribution and Acknowledgement?

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Yiwei Wang

As scientific projects grow more collaborative, data citation and data attribution has emerged as challenging issue. Sophie Hou will be presenting her poster on this topic and leading a discussion on how scientists might look to the movies to improve data attribution and acknowledgements.

See Sophie’s Presentation

Abstract: As scientific data volumes, format types, and sources increase rapidly with the invention and improvement of scientific capabilities, the resulting datasets are becoming more complex to manage as well. One of the significant management challenges is pulling apart the individual contributions of specific people and organizations within large, complex projects. This is important for two aspects: 1) assigning responsibility and accountability for scientific work, and 2) giving professional credit to individuals (e.g. hiring, promotion, and tenure) who work within such large projects.

This presentation will provide an overview for the concept of data citation, its current practices, and the strengths and weaknesses of the current data citation methods when applied to climate model dataset. Using the NCAR Global Climate Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation (CFDDA) Hourly 40km Reanalysis as a case study, the presentation will also demonstrate the creation and the result of a detailed data attribution. Analogous to acknowledging the different roles and responsibilities shown in movie credits, the methodology developed in the study could be used in general to identify and map out the relationships among the organizations and individuals who had contributed to a dataset. Finally, discussion questions will be presented in order to consider how this framework could be applied to create data attribution for other dataset types beyond climate models datasets.

Sophie with her poster

EVOS/GoA data projects: challenges and successes

Posted on April 30, 2015 by snarayan

Ever wonder that the Gulf of Alaska projects are and why we care about such a specific region here at NCEAS? Come find out at the next NCEAS roundtable! I will give a brief overview of the Gulf Watch Alaska Project and the role NCEAS has played in the ecological research up there.

Data archiving and maintenance was rather prehistoric in the 1980s when the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Price William Sound. Therefore, wrangling historic data in “the last frontier” has proven to be quite the adventure! Our group will be writing two papers based on our experiences: 1) data recovery and archiving and 2) data collection for synthesis work . I’ll be introducing these papers and asking for feedback and suggestions on direction, format, etc. Hope to see you there!

Jessica Couture, MS
National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis
University of California, Santa Barbara
couture@nceas.ucsb.edu

Meat, Demand, and Development

Posted on April 23, 2015 by snarayan

Global meat consumption is expected to rise dramatically in coming decades as consumers from emerging nations increase the amount of meat and animal protein in their diet. The “ecological hoofprint” of the livestock industry is already enormous, and it is expected to increase. Influential explanations on rising meat consumption (“livestock revolution,” “nutrition transition,” “hamburger connection”) assert a correlation between meat demand and rising income. The concept of demand requires elaboration in order to comprehend increasing global meat consumption and associated environmental and health impacts. I will discuss the political-economic processes and cultural considerations that contribute to demand in the emerging nation of Brazil, with a secondary emphasis on China. The aim of this project is to begin to build toward an enhanced understanding of the factors that structure the demand for meat in emerging countries and to better understand the material and discursive dimensions of development as revealed through meat.

Jeffrey Hoelle
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Barbara
Hoelle Culture and Environment Lab

Environmental Literacy for the Next Generation: Integrating science, pedagogy and communication

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Yiwei Wang

Carol Blanchette, Associate Research Biologist from the Marine Science Institute will be our Roundtable speaker next week. Please join us for a lively discussion on an interesting topic!

Abstract: “If science is going to fully serve its societal mission in the future, we need to both encourage and equip the next generation of scientists to effectively engage with the broader society in which we work and live” (Leshner 2007, AAAS CEO). This sentiment has been broadly embraced by scientists and non-scientists in recent years, along with the idea that scientists have a responsibility to share the meaning and implications of their work, and that an engaged public encourages sound public decision-making. Effective communication of science has become critically important in the environmental sciences, where public understanding of key environmental issues ranging from climate change to sustainable resource management has important policy implications. In this roundtable I will provide a brief overview of some of my experience and activities in the realm of science education and communication, and I will provide an overview of OCTOS, a new hub for environmental communication and science education activities on the UCSB campus. I will lead a discussion focused on how we (as scientists) can help to build communication capacity, serve as resources for science educators, and how to evaluate the efficacy of these efforts.

Modelling ecosystem services to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

Posted on April 7, 2015 by snarayan

There is a new SNAP Working Group in town, at NCEAS, and we’re going to use this round-table to interact with the group, find out what they’re doing, and offer our ideas as well. This will hopefully be the first of several such interactions with visiting working groups, so please do come along, participate, and give us your suggestions! Here’s a description of this week’s interaction, which is being led by Sarah Jones from Bioversity International:

The SNAP workshop group on Making Ecosystems Count in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be meeting in Santa Barbara 13-16 April to define the modelling steps that are needed to make the Natural Capital Project ecosystem service assessment toolkit (InVEST) feed into selected ecosystem service indicators. The aim is for these indicators to show relative progress towards SDG targets as mediated by ecosystem services, when these services are altered by different national land use policy and infrastructure investment scenarios.

We will present the project progress so far, our target indicators and draft model workflows, then we will open it to the floor for a discussion on how these models might be strengthened and delivered within project timeframes.

Sarah Jones
Ecosystem Services and Resilience Research Assistant
Bioversity International Montpelier, France

When big data and complex workflows meet the reality of finite data storage: a discussion of best practices for data management

Posted on March 11, 2015 by stacy

“tapes, backup” CC-BY-SA 2.0 by Martin Abblegen via flickr

Scientific workflows — for many of us, it’s a love/hate relationship. We love the fact that they help us keep our stuff organized, but hate the overhead required to maintain them. And then when we find out that our meticulously maintained workflow hasn’t captured some important detail? Oh the frustration!!

This discussion will be broadly about managing scientific workflows, and I hope to hear from everyone about the tools and tricks you have for keeping track of which outputs match with which inputs to an analysis, with which models, and which parameters, which figures, papers, and projects all of those things are connected to. It would be great to hear about a wide range of strategies ranging from how you organize and name your files to how you’ve implemented a workflow management tool like Kepler.

I also hope that we can spin up ideas for workflow management problems people may be facing, so if you have a workflow-related issue or question that you’d like to get input on, please let me know. I’ll make sure you get a few minutes to describe your problem or question so that you can get ideas from the crowd.

And if you’re reading this and thinking “I’m a workflow management pro, and don’t need any help with or ideas for managing my workflow,” then please come to the discussion! We (well, at least I) need your help. I have a homegrown scripted workflow management system for the text analyses I do, which does a great job of capturing a lot of details and documenting relationships between inputs and outputs, but requires me to purge unused outputs (e.g., outputs for all but selected runs of a model) manually. How do the rest of you keep track of which files you can throw away down the line and which need to be kept indefinitely? I need to downsize my data storage and am a little worried about making mistakes when I do this manually, so would love to hear ideas about how to build functions like this into my system.

Hope to see you all for a fun discussion!

Research in the coastal temperate rainforest, by Dr. Allison Bidlack

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Yiwei Wang

Juvenile Bald Eagle in Tree near Haines

Join us for our March 11th Roundtable with Dr. Allison Bidlack from the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center!

The north Pacific coastal temperate rainforest (PCTR) ecosystem extends from central British Columbia to southcentral Alaska, includes the largest remaining old-growth forests in North America, supports some of the most robust fisheries on the continent, and is home to tens of thousands of people who depend on a resource and tourism-based economy for their livelihoods. It is also a region characterized by an intricate geologic and evolutionary past, a rich cultural history, and complex linkages among ecosystem components. The social-ecological systems of the PCTR are being transformed by climate change, as well as by global economic drivers such as tourism, energy prices, and timber demand. Given the current rates of ecosystem change and the potential for profound systemic shifts and economic upheaval in the region and beyond, a more holistic understanding of these patterns, processes and impacts is essential for the effective management of resources and the resilience of communities. This talk will provide a brief introduction to the region and some of the integrative work being performed, with an emphasis on regional projects involving existing datasets.

Roundtable

An information-sharing forum for the NCEAS community.

Category Archives: discussion